But it’s more like a movement, ideology, and at times, an aesthetic.
It’s a form of Black cultural expression that ties together the past, present, and future.
But Afrofuturist aesthetics were already taking shape long before Dery wrote about it in the ’90s.
Clockwise: Girl group LaBelle in the 1970s, dressed in futuristic, stylized silver spacesuits. Missy Elliot performs onstage at Lillith Fair in Jones Beach. Normani performs onstage at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards in Brooklyn, New York. Grace Jones performs onstage in 1980.
Chloe Bailey in a virtual performance with sister Halle for the 2020 Billboard Music Awards.
Black women music artists have always played a pivotal role in the aesthetic development of Afrofuturism in popular culture.
Black beauty is being celebrated out loud and on a scale we haven’t seen before.
Chloe Bailey in a virtual performance with sister Halle for the 2020 Billboard Music Awards.
“That’s beautiful.
Grace Jones onstage in 1980.
Though, this time (as always), it’s a little different.
Grace Jones onstage in 1980.
Much like Jones, her style embraced the bizarre, the androgynous, the otherworldly.
She wasn’t afraid to getweirdwith it and maintain a version of glamour that diverged from the norm.
She didn’t need to present as conventionally “pretty” for assert her beauty.
Dawn Richard dressed as a stylized android.
But make no mistake: there’s always been space in Afrofuturism to be pretty.
See the video for Janet Jackson’s 2000 single, “Doesn’t Really Matter.”
Willow Smith moves freely between hairstyles in both her art and real life.
(The singer famouslyshaved her locsonstage during a show.)
In one scene, Smith appears in smoky black cat-eye shadow.
In the next, the makeup is more intense, sprouting a few extra wings for good measure.
Her hair, though it is straight, mimics the volume of an Afro.
She looks like a cross between a ‘round the way girl and a glorious extraterrestrial.
It’s something Richard says she wasn’t able to enjoy early on in her career.
“It was so much.
We had to have this bone-straight hair or the windblown look.
We had to look a certain way or it isn’t considered pop culture.”
you’ve got the option to credit social media for this shift.
In our pockets, we have access to what is essentially a buffet of micro and macro beauty influencers.
Even if their followings don’t launch them to mega-stardom, theyarevery much still tastemakers in their own right.
Dawn Richard dressed as a stylized android.
“Everything trickles down so much faster than it used to,” says Sir John.
It could be some girl in Harlem or Flatbush wearing beautiful, celestial neon liner.
No longer are we looking at the relics or red carpet for inspiration.
We’re looking at real people.
Social media has democratized beauty enough to allow Afrofuturist aesthetics to thrive.
The mainstream has to keep up with the demand.
“In the word Afrofuturism is the wordfuture.
“Afrofuturism is that choice where my genre can sit anywhere, my makeup can sit anywhere.
I don’t have to be pigeonholed.”
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